


the steep and winding road

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 21:26:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13555896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: Boyd’s always been careless with the people who love him. Raylan hasn’t expected anything from Boyd for over twenty years. He never asked for Boyd’s apologies, never anticipated that Boyd would mourn his loss. Ava answers and Raylan holds his gun and thinks,we are what you’ve made of us, then, and wonders if this is the time he’ll shoot true.





	the steep and winding road

**Author's Note:**

> More of my thoughts on the season 6 finale, though based off the famous moment in season 2 where Carol Johnson asks Raylan if she can trust Boyd to have her back, and he says he doesn't know, and Boyd has tried to kill him, but he did have his back on two occasions, and Carol says, "My, sounds like a love story." And so I thought, "what if Boyd's sort-of tried to kill Raylan before? What if the mine collapse was Boyd's fault?" And then wandered vaguely about. Mostly spoilers for season two and season six.

_Sounds like a love story,_ Carol Johnson says, and Raylan hides his scoff, because the only thing Boyd’s ever loved was the heat of a blast and the sound of his own voice.

Ms. Johnson doesn’t know that it was Boyd who brought down the mountain before he saved Raylan’s life, brimming with plans to steal the money right out of the company’s pockets and somehow astonished when the company responds by blowing up the mine and leaving them for dead.

_And, oh, he didn’t mean for that to happen, never meant for it to go that far. He was just running his mouth, that’s all, and goddamnit didn’t Raylan know Boyd would never have done it if he’d known it was going to end down a mineshaft with Raylan still inside?_

They’ll leave Harlan, Boyd promises. They’ll pack their things and hug their mamas and leave the very next night. And Raylan’s heard this before. Heard it after the last trick Boyd pulled wound up with both of them running from a whole gang of Cawood thugs and left Raylan with a broken nose and a few busted ribs that still ache when he’s hunched over in the mines. But he packs, and he hugs his mama and his Aunt Helen, and he drives up the hill to the Crowder place.

And there’s Boyd talking to Peleg Dunston, the latest in a line of Dunstons that have come up through juvie and are bound right back inside; Boyd’s already grinning when he sees Raylan, green glinting in his eyes when he says, “Peleg’s been telling me how B&M Mining just stashed a fortune in mining machinery outside Joseph’s Valley, and they ain’t got more than three guards!”

Raylan sways, hit with the realization that this is how it will be, hears the crack of Arlo’s hand against his mama’s face, Frances sobbing and Arlo swearing it won’t happen again. He realizes that if he stays in Harlan — if he stays with Boyd — then Boyd is going to get him killed. So he curls his fingers into fists, turns his head so Boyd can’t see him. He climbs into his truck and drives away.

(And it does something to Boyd, Raylan leaving, because Boyd _loves_ Raylan, loves him like wildfire and dynamite and the first scorching sip of moonshine, but Boyd had never lived in a world where Raylan wasn’t there. It had never even occurred to Boyd that such a world existed. He could never have let Raylan go, and it took weeks for him to believe that Raylan had let _him_ go, that this wasn’t just another one of Raylan’s fits, that any day now he’d be driving back over the ridge with his baseball cap and sour face and hauling Boyd into the cab of his truck with both hands.)

(Boyd thinks he stopped waiting for Raylan Givens’s miraculous return decades ago. He peers past Devil out the window of the church and doesn’t think, _Oh,_ there _he is_ , as he swings open the doors.)

Raylan comes back to Harlan and Boyd hasn’t changed a bit, up until God and coal mining again, and Raylan thinks _maybe,_ maybe Boyd’s finally -

But no, nothing’s changed, and Boyd’s going to get Raylan killed if Raylan stays.

And he hates to tell Ava that Boyd’s left her to rot in prison, because seeing her face brings back the ache of being nineteen and desperately in love and slapped in the face with the fact that he was never going to be at the top of Boyd’s list, that there was nothing Raylan Givens loved more than Boyd Crowder and there was nothing Boyd Crowder loved more than the smell of money and the flash of Emulex. Raylan knows how Ava feels. Knows it even as he dangles Markham’s money in front of Boyd. He knows all that and still wonders how she pulls the trigger, has spent decades thinking of ways to kill Boyd and still ain’t sure if he can.

Then they’re left at the end of everything, at the cabin, and Boyd asks Ava why she turned on him, but he’s watching Raylan, nineteen years old or twenty-one in the desert or forty-two and finally asking how Raylan could have left, if he’d really loved him, how he could have let Boyd go and turned away.

Ava answers for them both.

Boyd’s always been careless with the people who love him. Raylan hasn’t expected anything from Boyd for over twenty years. He never asked for Boyd’s apologies, never anticipated that Boyd would mourn his loss. Ava answers and Raylan holds his gun and thinks, _we are what you’ve made of us, then,_ and wonders if this is the time he’ll shoot true. But Boyd doesn’t pull. And it’s twenty years late for an apology, it’s too little for forgiveness and too late to put Raylan first. _  
_

_I never would have done it,_ Boyd whispers, as Raylan stomps over and snaps on the cuffs, _if I’d known that’s how it would end._ He doesn’t say what it is he wouldn’t have done — if Ava can hear, she must assume he means stealing Markham’s money, or running dope, or maybe even taking his dead brother’s place in Ava’s bed — but Boyd stares at Raylan and Raylan sees the reflection of a shaky miner’s light and a collapsing coal shaft in Boyd’s eyes, sees Boyd inviting Peleg onto the porch to talk about stealing a whole fleet of machines, sees the dust as nineteen-year-old Raylan Givens squares his jaw and drives away. And for the first time, Raylan believes Boyd might be telling the truth.

It’s not enough. It’s not enough to make Raylan speak to Boyd during the trial, or smile when Boyd tries to pass the time driving back and forth to the jail by goading Raylan into laughter or rage; it’s not enough to convince Raylan he ever wants to lay eyes on Boyd Crowder again. But then four years go by, and he meets Zachariah, and he thinks of how light Boyd’s hair was, before it went dark when they were teens, how it still had streaks the same sandy blond as this boy’s the first time they kissed. He thinks of how Boyd’s a nightmare that keeps Ava awake at night, thinks how different they are despite all that’s passed, because Raylan’s never once been afraid of Boyd Crowder, only afraid of what ends loving Boyd would bring him to.

And he runs his own con, visits Boyd in prison for the first time. Boyd’s regrets have had four years to settle under Raylan’s skin, to draw the pus from old wounds and leave nothing but scars.

_I believe you loved Ava,_ Raylan says, and he means that, but he means more besides, and Boyd’s eyes dampen the way they didn’t when they were nineteen and Raylan said, _I’m leaving Harlan. Now. Are you coming or ain’t you?_ and Boyd said, _Christ’s sake, Raylan, what’s another few nights?_ and Raylan swallowed the begging that wouldn’t do any good, clenched his fists so he couldn’t wrap himself around Boyd’s ankle and hang on, didn’t say good-bye because if he opened his mouth he might start screaming. He might give in, like Frances always did, and stay.

_Why are you here?_ Boyd wonders, reaches out and tries to catch Raylan with words when he seems like to leave. He carries his own set of scars from the day Boyd Crowder broke Raylan Givens’s heart and didn’t understand what it meant when Raylan drove away.

It took Boyd over twenty years to do things differently, to drop the gun and put Raylan at the top of the list. And it’s taken four more years for Raylan to wander back to Boyd. Boyd’s got plenty of time left to learn that Raylan might have walked away, decades ago, but he’d never managed to let go.

Boyd’s always been the clever one, though, and he sees the truth of it before Raylan says the words aloud. Maybe that nineteen-year-old boy knew what he was about, waiting in his yard every day for a month, so goddamned certain that Raylan Givens could never leave Boyd Crowder, not for long. Raylan stares at Boyd through the glass and holds on to the phone, and he thinks maybe Carol Johnson had the right of it after all.


End file.
